by Tara Lee Baxter
illustration by Jackie Duhard
“Welcome to the Museum of Exceptionally Dangerous Weaponry and History of Murderous Mayhem.” The tour guide had to stop and take a deep breath before continuing to greet the class of students gathered around her. “At the Museum of Exceptionally Dangerous Weaponry and History of Murderous Mayhem we invite questions during the tour, but please do not touch…”
“Excuse me?” Jeremy raised his hand, wiggling his fingers about.
The tour guide made a pained face. “Yes?”
“Don’t you have a shorter name for this place?” Jeremy asked. He did not seem to care that his teacher, Mrs. Murduck, was glaring at him.
“No,” the tour guide explained. “Because M.E.D.W.H.M.M. sounds rather silly. Now, before we proceed I have one rule…”
Jeremy raised his hand for a second time. Now he bounced up and down as the tour guide tried to ignore him. When Jeremy began waving his hand around and making ‘oh, oh, oh’ noises, the tour guide turned back to him.
“Yes?”
“When do we get to play with the swords?”
“You don’t get to play with the swords,” the tour guide snapped. “Don’t touch anything!”
The class was standing in a cluttered, dark room of an old mansion. The windows were blacked out with red velvet curtains and it smelt musty. Each of the walls was covered from floor to ceiling with swords, broadswords, rapiers, sabres, katanas, battle axes, and unusual weaponry of all sorts. The museum had once been the home of an eccentric old man who had more money than common sense. Apparently he had liked to use his fortune to collect pointy objects and some of them were rumoured to be haunted.
It had been Jeremy’s idea to visit this bizarre place on a field trip. After rolling her eyes, their teacher had put the suggestion to a vote in a class of equal numbers of boys and girls. The boys always voted with the other boys and the girls stuck out their tongues, voting the exact opposite. That had been the routine all year until one of the girls dared to vote with the boys to visit the museum.
That girl was Cecelia Reekes and she was now being ignored by all of the girls for her dreadful betrayal. As far as she was concerned, it gave her more time to study the weaponry and ignore the whispered jokes about her last name. When they were younger the other girls had read fairy tales about princesses, but Cecelia had preferred to look at the pictures of knights fighting dragons.
Jeremy did not seem to like being told that they would not be playing with the swords and argued with the tour guide that he should be allowed to demonstrate his incredible skill. Cecelia knew the closest Jeremy had ever come to a sword was hitting his little brother with a hockey stick. Mrs. Murduck was busy dragging Jeremy and the rest of the class to the next gallery. They never noticed that they left Cecelia behind.
She wandered around the gallery in awe of all of the weapons and did not know where to start. Cecelia was pondering a sword with a curved blade when she backed into a display case, stumbled and knocked it over. She whirled around expecting alarms to go off, but nothing happened. On the floor Cecelia found a weird metal glove that the sign on the display stand said was a gauntlet. She picked it up and upon closer inspection, found it to be a piece of knight’s armour.
Cecelia meant to put the gauntlet right back, but it was simply too tempting not to try it on. If she had read the sign on the display case more carefully, she probably would have reconsidered that hasty decision. The sign proclaimed ‘The Cursed Gauntlet of Wormelow Tump’ was supposedly worn by Amyr, son of King Arthur. If she had read that sign, she might have agreed with the wisdom of the tour guide’s rule to not touch anything.
As Cecelia slipped her hand into the gauntlet, she felt a sharp pain on her thumb. She dropped the gauntlet onto her foot.
“Ow!”
Cecelia stuck her thumb into her mouth and was about to kick the gauntlet when she heard Mrs. Murduck calling her from down the hallway. She scrambled to pick up the gauntlet and managed to get it back on the display stand when her teacher found her.
“What were you doing?”
“Nothing,” Cecelia answered. She winced when she saw the gauntlet was upside down, but Mrs. Murduck did not seem to notice.
Her teacher scowled at her, sensing with her mysterious teacher power that something was amiss.
“I’m keeping my eye on you, young lady.”
***
“Can anyone tell me why the Arthurian legend says the magical sword was stuck in the stone?” Mrs. Murduck asked.
Cecelia first noticed something was wrong when her left arm shot up. Her eyes widened when Mrs. Murduck raised her eyebrow in anticipation of Cecelia’s response. She looked at her left arm in confusion because it was still raised above her head. The weird thing was that Cecelia did not know the answer and certainly had not planned on raising her hand.
“I don’t know,” she blurted out.
“Then why did you raise your hand?”
Cecelia tried to will her left hand down, but it stubbornly kept its position above her head. “I really don’t know.”
She grabbed her left wrist with her right hand, forcing it down. She could feel her left arm fighting to shoot up again and she sat on her hand. Mrs. Murduck rolled her eyes at Cecelia’s antics and continued on with her lesson.
“Legend says the sword was lodged in the stone waiting for the rightful ruler of England to claim it.” Mrs. Murduck motioned to the tacky plastic recreation of a broadsword stuck in a fake stone. “Can anyone tell me…”
Cecelia’s left hand shot up once more.
“Miss Reekes, I didn’t even get a chance to ask my question,” Mrs. Murduck scolded.
Her hand was high above her head mocking her. Cecelia had to think fast because she doubted Mrs. Murduck would believe her if she said her hand was possessed.
Read the rest of the story in Crow Toes Quarterly's Thirteenth Issue,
available in the Crow Toes Quarterly Online Store.
